Advice on Fonts

Managing fonts for print:-


How to copy your fonts and send them to us.  

What is a Font
A font is a vectorised, ie mathematical, description of a typeface that is rendered to a high resolution bitmap on printing.
Font handling is one of the major causes of problems in print.

What problems?
     Spacing : A font renders differently on our system causing re-scroll, overshot text or poor alignment
     Missing Fonts : If you don't send your fonts unsuitable substitutions can occur
     Corrupt Fonts : A corrupt font can cause garbled type and system instability


How can I minimise font problems? . . . .

• Send PDF or EPS artwork - With fonts converted to curves or fully embedded. Don't use font subsetting.
• Send us ALL fonts used - If we can use the exact self same fonts you used then the chances of font errors are greatly minimised. For example, we have about 200 different versions of Helvetica, all of them will be very slightly different. We cannot guarantee that if we substitute one of our fonts on our system it will behave exactly the same as your font does in your document on your system.
• Don't use fonts you don't have - Many programs allow you to change font style by ticking a box. The problem here is that if you tick the "bold" box to make, for example, "Helvetica Light" bold you are creating an obvious contradiction since there can be no such font as "Helvetica Light Bold". Another common example is to italicise an italic font "Times italic italic" doesn't exist ! Unfortunately most programs that allow you to do this create a pseudo font that works on low res devices. It will look OK on your monitor and may even print to your printer but when we try to render this at high res the non-existent style disappears causing your type to change and re-scroll.
• Avoid coloured small type - The lines and serifs in small type don't render well when printed as tints since they can be narrower than our standard 175lpi dot screen.
• Macintosh Postscript Fonts - Standard Mac postscript fonts come in two parts one of which is saved in the resource fork of the Mac filesystem. If Mac fonts are passed at any time through a non Mac system that doesn't understand resource forks (every other system on the planet) then half of the font will be truncated to zero length. Mac fonts need to be protected by saving them in a stuffit archive - especially when sending them over the internet.
• Don't use hardware printer fonts - Printers often come with a range of fonts built in. When you install such a printer those fonts are then made available to your operating system as though they are normal fonts. We cannot match these fonts because we don't have your printer. You cannot send us these fonts because they are embedded in your printer hardware.
• Scrutinise your proofs - Examine your proofs very carefully for font rescroll and style changes, etc. Fonts can be problematic and this is the last stop before your job is comitted to paper.